Posts Tagged «international space station»

Younger generations haven’t experienced staggeringly monumental historic events like older generations have, such as World Wars or landing on the Moon. Our historic events so far — mostly related to personal technology, such as the rise of he PC and the internet — are more of a slow, incremental burn. However, a team of UK scientists are aiming for that staggering historic event that the younger generations can experience, and have designed a mission to land three humans on Mars.

The United Space Alliance, which manages the computers aboard the International Space Station in association with NASA, has announced that the Windows XP computers aboard the ISS have been switched to Linux. “We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable.”

Orbital Sciences Corporation has completed the first test launch of its Antares rocket, successfully deploying a dummy 3.8-tonne spacecraft into low Earth orbit (LEO). The next test flight, due in June, will see the launch of Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft, which will resupply the International Space Station. If that goes well, Orbital will begin a $1.9-billion contract with NASA to deliver eight resupply missions to the ISS.

A group of European researchers has proposed the largest quantum network yet: Between Earth and the International Space Station. Such a network would see entangled photons transmitted over a distance of 250 miles — two or three times greater than previous quantum communication experiments. Not only will this be the first quantum experiment in space, but it will allow the scientists to see if entanglement really is instantaneous over long distances, and whether it’s affected by gravity.

This morning, SpaceX successfully launched CRS-2 — the second commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Dragon capsule aboard the Falcon 9 rocket will dock with the ISS on Saturday morning, delivering 1,473 pounds (677kg) of cargo to the astronauts, and will return in a couple of weeks, filled to the brim with scientific experiments.

Over 1,700 highschool students around the world have competed for the last three months to be picked for a very special robotics competition. The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department held its Zero Robotics competition last week, and over 200 students participated by moving small satellites around on the International Space Station.

If you’re interested in space travel and exploration, the last 24 hours have been very exciting indeed. Not only has SpaceX’s Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station, but we also have an update on Curiosity’s discovery of a mysterious, shiny object on Mars, and Felix Baumgartner’s freefall skydive from Earth’s stratosphere.

Just over a year since the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and the retirement of the Space Transportation System, SpaceX has successfully launched a Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket — the first ever commercial resupply mission (CRS-1) to the International Space Station.

Sprites — named after Puck, a nature sprite in English folklore — are huge electrical discharges that occur in the mesosphere (50-100km above Earth), which are triggered by positive lightning strikes on the ground below.

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